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Mr. Wills:
I am very grateful to the hon. Lady for those comments, and I pay tribute to her and her colleagues who played such a constructive role in bringing
this forward at some speed. It is worth putting on record that the main reason why so many Members have taken this view is that it reflects the wishes of their constituents. We are not talking just about the will of Parliament; the will of the British people is at stake in this, too. I am grateful to all hon. Members who played a constructive role.
Also with cross-party support, we have introduced several significant amendments to the Bill. As a result of the recent consensus on the issue of parliamentarians' tax status, for example, it was possible to table amendments with the support of the Conservative Front-Bench team, which will ensure that hon. Members of both Houses of Parliament are liable to pay the same taxes as most UK taxpayers. Many hon. Members will recognise how important that is in the current climate. We have also delivered on the cross-party commitment to implement the report of the Committee on Standards in Public Life on MPs' expenses.
It is fair to say that some provisions have not been universally welcomed. New clauses to provide for a referendum, offering the public a choice between the current first-past-the-post system and the alternative vote system, have left the Conservative party isolated in their opposition. In contrast, we believe that we must do all we can to restore trust in politics, and it is clear that part of that process must involve consideration of which electoral system can best serve the people of this country. We believe that a credible alternative should be put to the people-it is not for the Government to decide this; it is for the British people themselves-one that would retain the link between MPs and constituencies, which we believe is fundamentally important. We believe that most hon. Members-whatever their view of the electoral system-consider that link to be important, and we believe that the British people themselves consider it to be a very valuable part of our political system.
In our view, the Bill as a whole gives greater clarity and transparency to Government business, both financial and non-financial. It tightens rules and regulations on membership of both Houses of Parliament in the wake of the profoundly damaging controversy over some Members' misuse of the allowances system, and it gives those rules and regulations teeth. It reasserts the right of people to protest around Parliament if they are unhappy, and it puts in their hands the decision whether to change the current electoral system if they feel that they would prefer a different and a better one. This Bill reinforces the principles of probity, transparency and accountability at the heart of public life, and I hope very much that Parliament will look favourably on it.
9.10 pm
Mr. Grieve: I am aware that the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, the right hon. Member for North Swindon (Mr. Wills) is approaching the end of his time in Parliament. I know that the Bill is of great importance to him, and I recognise that in piloting it through the House, he wanted to achieve as much consensus as possible.
Let me say at once that the Conservatives have no difficulty in welcoming many aspects of the Bill. Indeed, we have expressed our support for those aspects from the outset. They include the move to put the civil service on a statutory footing, the proposal to beef up the
Comptroller and Auditor General's national audit role and the work on judicial appointments, all of which, as the Minister will recall, we supported in earlier debates on the Bill.
We also welcome the small but nevertheless important tidying-up of matters relating to, for instance, human rights claims against devolved Administrations, ratification of treaties, Crown employment and nationality. Although I must tell the Secretary of State and the Minister that the Bill does not quite live up to its grandiloquent title-certainly the "governance" bit-we can happily welcome its sensible constitutional reforms, and we therefore will not seek to divide the House tonight.
That said, there are some aspects of the Bill that we find much more troublesome. I think it only right for me to mention them, because given the timetable facing the remaining life of this Parliament, sensible decisions will almost certainly have to be made at some point about whether the Bill can be enacted with the consensus that will be needed at the end of the Parliament's life or whether it should fail. As the Bill contains an adequate number of provisions that I want to see on the statute book, I hope that the Government will listen carefully to what I have to say about the parts of it that continue to cause us concern.
First, however, let me say something about new clause 37. I am grateful to the Government for taking account of the concern expressed by Members in all parts of the House about what appeared to be the creeping in of a substantial change in the way in which counts take place after elections. I am delighted that we were able to table the new clause, and even more delighted that the Government were able to adopt it in a way that would otherwise not have been possible. I have no doubt that one or two noises made about it by some returning officers are without merit or substance. Ultimately, it is for the House of Commons to decide how counts should take place, and not for bureaucrats to start deciding that they are a law unto themselves. We are fully entitled to lay down the ground rules for ourselves, especially if they are-as they appear to me to be-entirely reasonable.
The Government have also done a great deal in introducing clauses relating to IPSA, which my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) has already commented on. There have been some sensible debates. We entirely endorse the need for reform, and we are pleased that the opportunity has been taken of trying to resolve the matter as far as possible before the general election. We hope very much that the proposals will work and lead to far greater public confidence in the way in which the House works.
I have to turn to those bits that please us rather less. We think that the Government's proposals for a referendum on the alternative vote were brought in in great haste and in the most extraordinary fashion at the end of a long process-the Government have previously shown themselves to be rather hostile to such proposals. We think that a referendum would be a complete waste of money and undermine the first-past-the-post system, in which we believe and in which I think many Labour Members also believe. It strikes us that that measure is unnecessary, and we certainly would not wish to see it placed on the statute book.
It has been a matter of considerable regret during the passage of the Bill that it has not been possible to debate Opposition amendments that required debate and certainly should have been debated, such as our new clause this evening about evening out the size of constituencies and reducing the size of the House. At the risk of repeating what I have said frequently, I do not think that at any stage during the passage of the Bill and debate on the Floor of the House there has been time wasting. Indeed, I think that the Minister will acknowledge that this evening, in an effort to make progress, at times we have curtailed debate to make very short contributions. Yet we face the fact that, at Report stage of a constitutional measure of considerable importance, a huge number of amendments have not been debated at all. I deeply regret that we have not had a chance to debate our proposals, which would have reinforced the first-past-the-post system, made it fairer and produced fairer results.
In so far as our proposal has any pain involved in it, I say to the Secretary of State that, far from, as has been suggested, it being a piece of gerrymandering, the pain would fall fairly evenly. I cannot for the life of me see where the gerrymandering would be, because ultimately the decisions as to the shape of constituencies would lie entirely with the Boundary Commission, not with us as politicians. Our inability to debate that in this place during the passage of the Bill strikes me as an enormous missed opportunity. The title of the Bill does not reflect its true scope, and we have not had an opportunity to conduct a debate on that matter.
I turn to other areas of the Bill. There are some sensible amendments in respect of the House of Lords, which we also welcome, and we await with interest how the other place responds to them. Some of the amendments are extremely good. We are delighted that our proposals about the tax status of Members of the House of Lords, put forward by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition and tabled by us, enabled us to bring about a change- [Interruption.] I see the hon. Member for Pendle (Mr. Prentice) smiling, but the fact of the matter is that, until we tabled that amendment, there was nothing in the amendment paper to bring that about. It was only our intervention, and our saying that that was clearly an area of public concern that needed to be addressed, that finally enabled us to do that. I am delighted that it has happened. Times change, and what may have been deemed to be acceptable in previous generations, when Commonwealth citizens, or Commonwealth residents, were encouraged to come and spend parts of their careers in this country and then go back to their homes, is no longer seen as acceptable, because of the public perception that people may derive tax advantages from it. That is all the more reason, therefore, to change those rules, but until we tabled that amendment, we were not in a position to do anything about it. I acknowledge that the hon. Member for Pendle had this in his sights for a considerable period, but he did not seem to be very successful in persuading his own Front Benchers to take the issue particularly seriously.
Mr. Gordon Prentice: What's new then?
Mr. Grieve:
The hon. Gentleman says, "What's new?" I acknowledge that he has a personal approach in
being willing to articulate what he believes to be right which is much respected by Conservative Members. On that we are in agreement.
We are less in agreement on two matters relating to the House of Lords. I do not wish to go over the first in great detail, but it is worth reminding ourselves that the Government's decision to get rid of the by-elections for electing a certain number of hereditary peers pending the final resolution of the constitutional status and reform of the Upper House is a flagrant breach of the undertakings that they gave at the time of the initial House of Lords reform. I very much regret that; this is not a final reform of the House of Lords. If it is, the Government have been misleading the public as to what the final reform might be. For those reasons, I do not think that this is a good idea, and I strongly believe that the Government will find that when the Bill gets to the other place, they may have difficulties there as well.
Then there is an issue that is of deep concern to us but is quite capable of being resolved. I have to put the Minister on notice that unless it is sorted out, it will prejudice the ability of the Bill to go on the statute book; it is the extraordinary procedure by which it will be possible, under the Bill as it stands, for a Member of the House of Lords to resign and immediately stand for election for the House of Commons. I think that I am right in saying that the Liberal Democrats and ourselves-and, indeed, I suspect others in this House-tend to see that as a device by which certain Government Ministers who have found their political careers in this place ended by various problems and gone to the other place for a resting period while they recover their strength, can like Lord Voldemort, come back to this House, reinvigorated. Quite frankly that is unacceptable.
There must be a period between resignation from the House of Lords and return or re-embodiment in this Chamber. There should be a period during which that return is not permitted. It is likely that that matter will be returned to in another place. If there is no time, and we get to the wash-up and there have to be discussions about issues in the Bill, that is one that will have to be sorted out to our satisfaction if the Bill is to go on the statute book. As it stands, it is contemptuous of the public and of the reasons why people should be going to the House of Lords in the first place as legislators; usually because they accept that some aspect of political ambition is gone and not as a springboard to a resurrected existence in this place. For those reasons, I hope that the Government will listen to the arguments in the other place and act accordingly.
Finally we come, with some regret, to the issue concerning noise in Parliament square. The Government tabled some sensible amendments to the Bill to try to resolve some of the civil liberties issues surrounding demonstrations around Parliament where we were unhappy-the Government had begun to accept out unhappiness-that the structures that had been set up previously were a fetter on civil liberties and freedom of expression. We were supportive of the Government on that and pleased that they were in the Bill.
We had also understood-we believed that the Government shared our concern-that in some cases the right to freedom of expression was being abused by people bombarding Parliament with amplified noise to such a level as to constitute a serious nuisance. Indeed anyone who works in this building will know exactly
what the impact is, particularly if they have rooms or offices that are adjacent to Parliament square itself. It was our understanding that the Government recognised that there was an issue, were happy-we thought-for there to be a free vote and were encouraging that it should not be seen as a partisan issue, as indeed we did not see it. We tabled an amendment in good faith, which we very much hoped would command acceptance. Indeed, until very recently we thought it would receive considerable encouragement from the Government. It is therefore unfortunate that this Bill will be going ahead without a provision dealing with the noise nuisance in Parliament square.
I am the first to accept the cock-up theory of politics, rather than the conspiracy theory, and the Minister for Policing, Crime and Counter-Terrorism, who answered for the Government on Report, appeared to say that he had been brought into this matter at the very last minute, so I can understand why he might not be aware of the Government's previously stated position on a number of occasions, particularly by the Secretary of State for Justice, and why they may have suddenly got cold feet. I found it difficult to disentangle the reasons for that. On the one hand, they might have been procedural, in that he shared the intention but thought there was a defect in the Opposition amendment. It is not the first time that Opposition amendments have been defective, however; it is often jolly difficult for Oppositions to draft amendments that are perfect, and if the Government support the principle behind them, we rather expect them to lend a hand in tidying things up. On the other hand, the problem might have been that the Minister for Policing, Crime and Counter-Terrorism had suddenly decided that there was some electoral, or other, advantage in arguing that people should be allowed to bombard the Houses of Parliament with amplified noise at nuisance level for hour after hour every day. I do hope that the latter is not the case. Indeed, I find it difficult to believe it is the case, because of all the expressions of concern about this issue from Members throughout the House, including the Government Back Benches.
May I therefore make a plea to the Minister? I hope that he understands that we felt that we had to put the matter to the vote, because of the Government's unexpected withdrawal of support for the proposal without coming up with any alternative. Clearly, the opportunity still exists to deal with this, and I urge the Minister to do so in a way both that sends out a message that the House of Commons supports civil liberties and freedom of expression, and, equally reasonably, that maintains that there are proper ways of expressing oneself that do not involve a noise nuisance perpetrated hour after hour. I cannot believe that it is beyond the wit of a parliamentary draftsman to put something together that can provide that without also silencing the bells of Westminster abbey, as has been suggested in rather apocalyptic fashion. I am by no means persuaded that the amendment that was tabled would have done that, but it was clearly not the intention that it should do so.
The Bill is lacking in this respect. The Government took a specific decision to deal with demonstrations in the vicinity of Parliament square, which was a sensible move, but at the end a key component is missing. I urge the Minister to address this when he goes away to discuss these matters with his colleagues and to consider what is to be done in the other place.
I do not want to take up any more of the House's time. This Bill has been a bit of a magical mystery tour, in that we have never known from one day to the next what would be in it. It started out in concept as very grand indeed, but by the time it was launched on Second Reading it had shrunk to mouse-like size. It has since been mildly reinvigorated in some areas, but it is defective in others. We have got to try to sort that out. If we do so, I would like to think that even if the Minister is not completely satisfied with the outcome, he will at least leave this place with a proper sense that he has actually achieved something that is a monument to his endeavours. I say to him that I would like to see that happen. A bit of flexibility on the part of the Government in the dying weeks of this Parliament can ensure that it does.
9.29 pm
Dr. Tony Wright: I shall be very brief. In some ways, this should be called the "constitutional highways and byways" Bill, because we have roamed freely during its passage. For a moment I wish to return to where we started, because I was keen on where we started and, in particular, on the proposition that the time had finally come, after 150 years, to put the civil service on to a statutory basis. Many of us had been campaigning year in, year out on the issue and undertakings had been given by this Government and, in some respects, by the previous one, that this would happen, but I had begun to think that it never would. I am delighted that it has been possible, through political consensus-that was always the precondition for this happening-to get within a close distance of having secured it. I can say to the House that this measure will be an enormous source of satisfaction to the civil service of this country, which has wanted this constitutional underpinning for a long time-securing it will be a huge achievement. Whatever else happens in the remaining life of this Bill, I hope that we can at least secure that provision because that was its core constitutional element when we set out and not to secure it at this stage would be serious.
Given that that provision was the Bill's core element at the beginning, I regret very much that many amendments relating to it were never able to be taken because we went off on this constitutional tour. However, I am delighted that the Government have now accepted what is contained in amendment 35. It has not been discussed at any point, and in a different world it would have been the subject of exhaustive discussion because it turns on the powers that we think special advisers should have; this would have been a major item of debate on this Bill. So although I say that it is good that right at the end the Government have accepted an amendment that the Public Administration Committee had proposed, it is not satisfactory that it has not been discussed as we progressed. A long list of other amendments on the civil service have not been discussed either, and that cannot be satisfactory.
Having said that, I was one of those who was pressing for some of the highways and byways to be explored and, in particular, some of the tidying-up measures relating to the House of Lords. I was pleased that we managed to accommodate those in the Bill, but my regret is that we did so selectively. The Government
have taken up large elements of Lord Steel's Bill, but they failed to take up the residual bit that proposes that it is time to put the House of Lords Appointments Commission on a statutory basis. I think that the House of Lords will have something to say about that omission. That bears directly on today's controversy about Lord Ashcroft, because it cannot be right that when a non-statutory body imposes an obligation on a prospective Member of the House of Lords to come onshore for tax purposes, that can be disregarded without any sanction. It cannot be right that a non-statutory body can start inventing rules of that kind which are then not enforced. We have to be serious about this machinery and not just have a row about the consequences of it. We must ensure that we have the machinery embedded, constitutionally, in the proper place-I suspect that we are not done on that.
I was not one of those who was pressing to include a provision on the electoral system, but, on balance, I think that the alternative vote system is probably preferable to first past the post. I merely note in the margin of that discussion that it has implications for us. Everyone party to that discussion was lining up to say how much they believe in the single Member constituency. Of course we all love the single Member constituency because we are all "the single Member". I am not sure that it looks quite the same from the point of view of the citizen. I am about to become what we like to call "an ordinary person" and, as such, my view of these matters is liable to be quite different from the one that I have as the single Member for my constituency sitting in this place. Casting an eye in the Speaker's direction, I shall simply say that at some point we will have to revisit the guidance if we are all so attached to the single Member constituency. After all, we send letters out to people saying that we cannot possibly deal with their case if they are not one of our constituents. In fact we say-I do it, too-that there is a strict parliamentary convention against it. If someone happens to have a Member of Parliament who they find politically or personally so antipathetic that they want to go nowhere near them, which is not inconceivable, and seeks to approach another Member of Parliament to take up their cause, I am not so sure that that citizen-that ordinary person-will feel quite so attached to the single Member constituency when they get the letter saying that there is a strict parliamentary convention that means that the second MP cannot deal with them. If that is the general consensus of opinion in the House, even if we might change in the direction of the alternative vote, we must revisit some of the conventions to which we say we are so attached.
I had hoped to go to my political grave having secured one further thing, which I have failed to do. It is a simple thing: to allow citizens to take up cases directly with the ombudsman. When the House set up the ombudsman system in 1967, it worried that the system would undermine the ability of Members of Parliament to deal with the grievances of their constituents. That turned out to be completely false. For the past 30 years, successive ombudsmen have called for the right of direct citizen access. The Cabinet Office had a discussion 10 years ago and it recorded that there was universal dissatisfaction with the present system. In 2004, my Committee, in association with the ombudsman, did a survey of all Members of Parliament and found that there was a clear majority in favour of direct access.
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